Sockets like initctl are far less fragile. You don't need a dbus-daemon that you can't restart if you cant talk to systemd. Your parser needs to recognise single-character commands instead of a complex rpc syntax plus an xml parser or javascript vm for filtering. You can't honestly believe DBUS isn't miles from the robustness of initctl.
> IMHO, all that's changed is that there's more uniformity, meaning a single set of tools can be used to test+harden all such RPC interfaces, and security flaws can be fixed in one place (DBUS itself) rather than requiring theory-level descriptions of vulnerabilities to be communicated to each project, whereupon they're hopefully translated to separate one-off patches the affected daemon.
Instead of easy-to-audit socket permissions you get a complex mess of xml and javascript filtering rules. This isn't progress in terms of security, its quite the opposite. Pounds of additional attack surface and additional obfuscation hindering defense.